I think you are missing the point here... the Microsoft monopoly FORCES hardware manufacturers to deliver their goods with Windows drivers.
Nobody FORCES people to write Windows drivers any more than somebody FORCES them to breathe. I'm getting sick of this rhetoric. It's a BUISNESS decision. It's a decision that maximizes profit. I'm not going to argue if that's a good thing or not. It just is.
Following your logic nobody FORCES hardware manufacturers to NOT make Linux drivers. Again, this is a marketing and buisness decision. In order to give them an incentive to write drivers, there must be a significant installed base of Linux users with their hardware (as was the case with NVidia). If you want them to release the specs for their hardware, it still requires a significant number of Linux users to get this done. Until the incentive and profit potential is there, companies will not write drivers.
What does this mean? This means that if you want drivers for Linux, write your device manufacturer. Conduct boycotts, or just flat out tell people not to buy hardware from company X because they don't support Linux. Instead buy hardware that is either supported by Linux or hardware that has Linux drivers. When you fill out a registration card or customer input card, note that you're using it with Linux. This is the only way we can get the changes that most people in the Linux world want.
Re:But they are open source
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· Score: 2, Informative
They are supporting open source, so what if they are for profit, if you want them to survive you will support them, Open source companies must make money somehow.
Yes, they are making their money by selling their distro. I have bought their distro, therefore I have supported them. I feel no remorse in not joining MandrakeClub if I have bought their boxed distro.
Or are you so greedy you wont even give them money so they will keep making your code?
As much as I love and support Mandrake, if they can't get their buisness model turned around and turn a profit and they go under, it won't be the end of my world. I will go to one of the many other fine distros out there for newbie users for machines that I set up for other people. Doesn't bother me. That's why Open Source is so nice. If you can't get it from one distributer, you can always go to another and get it from there, or you can get it from the source.
The flaw in your logic lies in the fact that Mandrake is a for profit company. As much as I like them, they are out to make a profit through their products. Would you apply the same logic to Microsoft since they're for profit?
They are supporting closed source, so what if they are for profit. If you want them to survive, you will support them. Closed source companies must make money somehow.
Again, this doesn't work because Microsoft is a for-profit company. If a company cannot find a way to make money on its products, too bad, so sad, they go out of buisness.
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
Stupid comments shut themselves up.
Nothing like Enron
on
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Ask Enron or anyone else victimized by retarded management how hard it is to make a comeback.
Don't you mean "Ask the shareholders of Enron how victimized they felt when a company they relied on betrayed them"? I'm sorry, I feel bad for the workers and shareholders of Enron, but this is nothing like Enron. First, Enron managment wasn't retarded: they knew full well what they were doing, and did it anyway. Second, Enron had some help at the federal level to get away with some of its corporate misdeeds. Finally, Enron's employees and customers had no idea what was going on.
Contrast that with Mandrake. The managemnt that you call "retarded" had a different direction for the company that didn't work out. They didn't try to steal from the company, screw the shareholders, or cover their own ass. Secondly, Mandrake has always been supported by its users, be it donations or purchases of its boxed set. Finally, the user base of Mandrake saw where it was going and let the company know that wasn't the way they wanted it to go.
Sorry, somehow I don't see how this was ANYTHING like Enron.
Re:Good For Them
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I mean trying to make it user friendly-fine that's a great idea to appeal to the non-Linux user, but I don't think a lot of effort should be focused on actively trying to get users converted.
I agree. People should use Linux because they like Linux, not because Linux can be made to look like Windows.
[rant] I tried to set up a Red Hat box for someone. Big mistake. Not only did they not understand what was going on, but with all of the GUI cruft on top, any time they tried to tweak something, they ended up overwriting my customizations. Now, I'm not against GUI tools, but when a GUI tool is too stupid to keep settings that are hand entered, then it's not the right way to do something. Or, at least, it should ask confirmation. I ended up setting up a Debian box, and I ssh into it to maintain it for them if something goes wrong.[/rant]
Re:Good For Them
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Seems to me that the basic membership ($5/mo) is a nice way to give them a steady revenue stream, which is important for software businesses.
A membership of this sort would be great if they were a non-profit company. While I agree that they do good work, it is their job to become profitable. It's not my job to support their work or pay twice for an OS or product I've already paid for.
If you buy the CD from anyone but Mandrake directly, they only get about half of the money.
Note to all: This is why you should buy directly from Mandrake.
Well, if Gentoo starts with a D, then yes. Otherwise, it's that "other" free distro that gave Gentoo some of its direction and its social contract.:-)
Re:Good News
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Mandrake News
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The other thing I would like to see happen with all the Linux companies is to organize a general lobbying group to challenge MS's marketing force. To challenge the public and government perceptions of the system.
I think that this could be a Good Thing (TM). However, just showing the governement that something is technically superior is not enough. There are such things as legacy systems. A business evaluates (or should evaluate) a plan to change something in its computer infrastructure based on technical merits and capital needed to get its legacy systems to change. Somehow, I think getting a lot of their older systems working with Linux will be easier than getting them to work with Windows. However, what would the cost be for them to convert many of their Windows desktop machines to Linux desktop machines running Mandrake or Red Hat or any other distribution? I somehow think that it will be a little more expensive.
The final thing needed is solid development efforts by manufacturers to support hardware in Linux.
I think it will be a pretty cold day in hell before you see every piece of consumer hardware come with Linux drivers as well as Windows drivers. Why? Because (say it with me now) it's cheaper to develop, maintain, and support drivers on one operating system as opposed to developing, maintaining, and supporting them on many operating systems. For example, take HomePNA devices. For awhile, they were popular with Windows users when 802.11b was very expensive. There exists a binary only Linux driver, and it doesn't work correctly with the kernel when you compile the glue code with gcc-3.2. Why haven't they been updated? Nobody knows or cares enough about the internals of the devices to update the code, and the company that wrote them doesn't want to give out the specs for the devices.
I personally use Linux all of the time, but until there is a giant attitude change (or hell freezes over, or Microsoft licensing terms become more strict than now), I don't think I'll see this soon. I'm okay with that. I use Linux not because it's popular, but because I like and appreciate choice in operating systems.
Re:Question.
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Ask not what MandrakeClub can do for you, but what you can do for MandrakeClub.
But seriously, what good is Microsoft's computer aid to children who don't have food, clean drinking water, and an education. Someone enlighten me on this...
Re:Good For Them
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Mandrake News
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· Score: 4, Insightful
And remember, if you use Mandrake, it doesn't hurt to donate some money to them.
I'm sorry, but if I've paid for their PowerPack in a store (which, by the way, it decently priced as far as distros go, AND it includes StarOffice 6.0), I don't feel guilty by not donating or joining MandrakeClub. For some reason, after leaving the "other" operating system behind, I don't feel it necessary to pay twice for an operating system.
OS Refugee Offer
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Reading the OS Refugee Offer, I think it's a great idea. Personally, if they had an idea like that when I was shopping around for distros (metaphorically speaking) I would have gone for that offer in a heartbeat. Now only of Red Hat and SuSE (especially SuSE) did this, we might have some competition with Windows for PHBs. (Of course, the undisputed king of distros shall be unnamed at this time to avoid starting a flamewar. It suffices to say that it is free and always will be.)
You can already play Halo online without subscribing to XBox Live. My friends and I do it all of the time. For Linux (and only Linux, but there is a boot disc in case you don't want to install Linux), go to http://www.xboxgw.com/ for the software. If you're a GameSpy junkie, you can use their software too, from http://www.gamespyarcade.com/software/support/tunn el_xbox.shtml. Note, I haven't used any games other than Halo, but supposedly any game with a system link functionality will work over these.
This just makes good business sense on his part. Never, ever, has he said he wanted to overthrow Microsoft. Why would he? Why bring the wrath of several billion dollars to bear on yourself?
Or the wrath of several billion dollars of hitmen.
Hello! Earth to Linux user! You have a driver problem. Most Windows boxes do NOT have these problems, and if they do, the person using the box calls up his/her computer person and it's fixed the next day. Go check your system log (you DO know where that is in Windows 2000, right?) and figure out what's causing the problem. Then troubleshoot it and fix it.
Of course, using the same machine in Linux with drivers not written by the manufacturers, but by hackers, we don't have random crashes. I don't think you can blame every BSOD on a driver problem. The people that write the drivers usually know more about the hardware than people that produce drivers for the Linux kernel seeing as they know all of the details for that particular hardware.
Of course, since I don't have Windows on this machine anymore, I can't test this theory, can I?:-)
Recent models have dropped support for Video CDs, and this is rumored to have been because of pressure from Sony. (Why Sony would pressure this, I do not know.) However, Super Video CDs play fine.
There is a single standard. It's called./configure. Yes, this means that you have to compile from source. It's not that hard. I feel that if you get a compiler for free with your operating system, you should use it.
For the desktop, I agree there should be a standard, and that is educating people in how to use their computer. The reason people have problems with computers is because they don't have to learn to use them. Of course, I am probalby feeding the troll, but I feel it needs to be said: next time a friend/girlfriend/brother/sister/mom/dad/relative/ complete stranger asks you for computer help, try to teach them something. Trust me, it's easier that whacking them with a clue-by-for constantly.
I would hardly say that most people want to sit and jack around with config files. If you want the flexibility , install from the source.. but it's going to be efforts like Red Carpet that take Linux to the masses, not the continued 'Flexibility' you speak of.
You make a single assumption: that I think GUI tools and wizards are bad. I'm not saying that they're bad, but I am saying that they hide options that are important for flexibility. Wizards are good for people that have never used a piece of software before, or that do not care about learning that piece of software. (In the MS world, that seems to be about 75% of the users, hence the reason that wizards are so popular in that world.) GUI tools are, indeed, very helpful, however, many projects take this a step to far and make is so that you have to use all GUI tools to configure an application, or have to go out of the way to learn a specific "registry key" or edit a certain hex value at an offset in a binary file. This is what is bad.
Furthermore, wizards hide many things that are important. Can you imagine a wizard interface to all of the options in sendmail.cf? In this case, it may not be viable. In this case, text files are very useful for configuring.
"Flexibility" is a very generic term. Linux is very useful because of it's flexibility, which should be preserved. Yes, wizards are a part of flexibility, but don't count on me using them. I would launch into a long list of ways the flexibility of Linux is used, but that would make me a Linux bigot/zealot/karma whore. I'm sure that many Fortune 500 companies didn't choose Linux for servers and workstations because of "that thar' wizard thing".
A typical use of older machines, as a firewall/router, springs to mind. Here I doubt that the 2.4 firewall code is much more resource hungry than the 2.0 code, but the changes to the kernel make iptables much more flexible than ipfwadm.
What about machines that stared life with ipfwadm and have been firewall/routers for about 5 years now? Updating to the newest kernels pretty much means you have to rewrite all of the rules in ipchans/iptables, which takes time of an employee, which costs money, and decreases productivity. I'd rather just install an old 2.0 series kernel for the latest security patches than I would have to go through the pain of rewriting lots of firewall rules.
I agree that wizards are good for people that don't know the basics about configuring packages and programs. They are a good way to get people to use software that they might not otherwise may be able to set up properly. However, wizards often suffer from WYSIAYG (What You See Is All You've Got). If a setting that may be important for a small number of users is left out of a wizard, then you hinder their ability to configure. However, general GUI configuration utilities are good too. For example, SWAT is a great example of a GUI configuration utility that is not a wizard.
While graphical is good for beginners and some advanced users, you also should provide flexibility. Configuration files were made to be edited by hand! This is why Linux is so popular, flexibility. By hiding configuration behind a wizard and storing that configuration in a proprietary, non-text format like some large software vender who shall remain nameless, configuration files provide for flexibility. Not to mention that big configuration files (sendmail.cf for example) allow the user to learn from their mistakes, and it is a right of passage to set up one correctly for the first time. It used to be the same for X, but now with all of the wizards (which don't work on all new cards:-)), people don't have to learn to use their computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone else find it just a little cheesy when a for-profit corporation is soliciting donations?
Maybe they're taking their cues from Mandrake?
I think you are missing the point here ... the Microsoft monopoly FORCES hardware manufacturers to deliver their goods with Windows drivers.
Nobody FORCES people to write Windows drivers any more than somebody FORCES them to breathe. I'm getting sick of this rhetoric. It's a BUISNESS decision. It's a decision that maximizes profit. I'm not going to argue if that's a good thing or not. It just is.
Following your logic nobody FORCES hardware manufacturers to NOT make Linux drivers. Again, this is a marketing and buisness decision. In order to give them an incentive to write drivers, there must be a significant installed base of Linux users with their hardware (as was the case with NVidia). If you want them to release the specs for their hardware, it still requires a significant number of Linux users to get this done. Until the incentive and profit potential is there, companies will not write drivers.
What does this mean? This means that if you want drivers for Linux, write your device manufacturer. Conduct boycotts, or just flat out tell people not to buy hardware from company X because they don't support Linux. Instead buy hardware that is either supported by Linux or hardware that has Linux drivers. When you fill out a registration card or customer input card, note that you're using it with Linux. This is the only way we can get the changes that most people in the Linux world want.
They are supporting open source, so what if they are for profit, if you want them to survive you will support them, Open source companies must make money somehow.
Yes, they are making their money by selling their distro. I have bought their distro, therefore I have supported them. I feel no remorse in not joining MandrakeClub if I have bought their boxed distro.
Or are you so greedy you wont even give them money so they will keep making your code?
As much as I love and support Mandrake, if they can't get their buisness model turned around and turn a profit and they go under, it won't be the end of my world. I will go to one of the many other fine distros out there for newbie users for machines that I set up for other people. Doesn't bother me. That's why Open Source is so nice. If you can't get it from one distributer, you can always go to another and get it from there, or you can get it from the source.
The flaw in your logic lies in the fact that Mandrake is a for profit company. As much as I like them, they are out to make a profit through their products. Would you apply the same logic to Microsoft since they're for profit?
They are supporting closed source, so what if they are for profit. If you want them to survive, you will support them. Closed source companies must make money somehow.
Again, this doesn't work because Microsoft is a for-profit company. If a company cannot find a way to make money on its products, too bad, so sad, they go out of buisness.
Stupid comments shut themselves up.
Ask Enron or anyone else victimized by retarded management how hard it is to make a comeback.
Don't you mean "Ask the shareholders of Enron how victimized they felt when a company they relied on betrayed them"? I'm sorry, I feel bad for the workers and shareholders of Enron, but this is nothing like Enron. First, Enron managment wasn't retarded: they knew full well what they were doing, and did it anyway. Second, Enron had some help at the federal level to get away with some of its corporate misdeeds. Finally, Enron's employees and customers had no idea what was going on.
Contrast that with Mandrake. The managemnt that you call "retarded" had a different direction for the company that didn't work out. They didn't try to steal from the company, screw the shareholders, or cover their own ass. Secondly, Mandrake has always been supported by its users, be it donations or purchases of its boxed set. Finally, the user base of Mandrake saw where it was going and let the company know that wasn't the way they wanted it to go.
Sorry, somehow I don't see how this was ANYTHING like Enron.
I mean trying to make it user friendly-fine that's a great idea to appeal to the non-Linux user, but I don't think a lot of effort should be focused on actively trying to get users converted.
I agree. People should use Linux because they like Linux, not because Linux can be made to look like Windows.
[rant] I tried to set up a Red Hat box for someone. Big mistake. Not only did they not understand what was going on, but with all of the GUI cruft on top, any time they tried to tweak something, they ended up overwriting my customizations. Now, I'm not against GUI tools, but when a GUI tool is too stupid to keep settings that are hand entered, then it's not the right way to do something. Or, at least, it should ask confirmation. I ended up setting up a Debian box, and I ssh into it to maintain it for them if something goes wrong.[/rant]
Seems to me that the basic membership ($5/mo) is a nice way to give them a steady revenue stream, which is important for software businesses.
A membership of this sort would be great if they were a non-profit company. While I agree that they do good work, it is their job to become profitable. It's not my job to support their work or pay twice for an OS or product I've already paid for.
If you buy the CD from anyone but Mandrake directly, they only get about half of the money.
Note to all: This is why you should buy directly from Mandrake.
Well, if Gentoo starts with a D, then yes. Otherwise, it's that "other" free distro that gave Gentoo some of its direction and its social contract. :-)
The other thing I would like to see happen with all the Linux companies is to organize a general lobbying group to challenge MS's marketing force. To challenge the public and government perceptions of the system.
I think that this could be a Good Thing (TM). However, just showing the governement that something is technically superior is not enough. There are such things as legacy systems. A business evaluates (or should evaluate) a plan to change something in its computer infrastructure based on technical merits and capital needed to get its legacy systems to change. Somehow, I think getting a lot of their older systems working with Linux will be easier than getting them to work with Windows. However, what would the cost be for them to convert many of their Windows desktop machines to Linux desktop machines running Mandrake or Red Hat or any other distribution? I somehow think that it will be a little more expensive.
The final thing needed is solid development efforts by manufacturers to support hardware in Linux.
I think it will be a pretty cold day in hell before you see every piece of consumer hardware come with Linux drivers as well as Windows drivers. Why? Because (say it with me now) it's cheaper to develop, maintain, and support drivers on one operating system as opposed to developing, maintaining, and supporting them on many operating systems. For example, take HomePNA devices. For awhile, they were popular with Windows users when 802.11b was very expensive. There exists a binary only Linux driver, and it doesn't work correctly with the kernel when you compile the glue code with gcc-3.2. Why haven't they been updated? Nobody knows or cares enough about the internals of the devices to update the code, and the company that wrote them doesn't want to give out the specs for the devices.
I personally use Linux all of the time, but until there is a giant attitude change (or hell freezes over, or Microsoft licensing terms become more strict than now), I don't think I'll see this soon. I'm okay with that. I use Linux not because it's popular, but because I like and appreciate choice in operating systems.
Ask not what MandrakeClub can do for you, but what you can do for MandrakeClub.
But seriously, what good is Microsoft's computer aid to children who don't have food, clean drinking water, and an education. Someone enlighten me on this...
And remember, if you use Mandrake, it doesn't hurt to donate some money to them.
I'm sorry, but if I've paid for their PowerPack in a store (which, by the way, it decently priced as far as distros go, AND it includes StarOffice 6.0), I don't feel guilty by not donating or joining MandrakeClub. For some reason, after leaving the "other" operating system behind, I don't feel it necessary to pay twice for an operating system.
Reading the OS Refugee Offer, I think it's a great idea. Personally, if they had an idea like that when I was shopping around for distros (metaphorically speaking) I would have gone for that offer in a heartbeat. Now only of Red Hat and SuSE (especially SuSE) did this, we might have some competition with Windows for PHBs. (Of course, the undisputed king of distros shall be unnamed at this time to avoid starting a flamewar. It suffices to say that it is free and always will be.)
You can already play Halo online without subscribing to XBox Live. My friends and I do it all of the time. For Linux (and only Linux, but there is a boot disc in case you don't want to install Linux), go to http://www.xboxgw.com/ for the software. If you're a GameSpy junkie, you can use their software too, from http://www.gamespyarcade.com/software/support/tunn el_xbox.shtml. Note, I haven't used any games other than Halo, but supposedly any game with a system link functionality will work over these.
Rules of BOFH package manager
Oh, and it's always good to blame any breakage on someone else
The best native package management is a combination of three things:
1) BOFH
2) tar -xzf
3) gcc
At least, that seems to be the view I get from using Slackware. (And I love it!)
Or the wrath of several billion dollars of hitmen.
I didn't know that Microsoft Fanboys owned Mensa...
Of course, using the same machine in Linux with drivers not written by the manufacturers, but by hackers, we don't have random crashes. I don't think you can blame every BSOD on a driver problem. The people that write the drivers usually know more about the hardware than people that produce drivers for the Linux kernel seeing as they know all of the details for that particular hardware.
Of course, since I don't have Windows on this machine anymore, I can't test this theory, can I?
Recent models have dropped support for Video CDs, and this is rumored to have been because of pressure from Sony. (Why Sony would pressure this, I do not know.) However, Super Video CDs play fine.
Do you read Usenet? I've seen so many copies floating around there. I'm sure M$ won't miss ONE sale...:-)
Master Of Magic
There is a single standard. It's called ./configure. Yes, this means that you have to compile from source. It's not that hard. I feel that if you get a compiler for free with your operating system, you should use it.
/ complete stranger asks you for computer help, try to teach them something. Trust me, it's easier that whacking them with a clue-by-for constantly.
For the desktop, I agree there should be a standard, and that is educating people in how to use their computer. The reason people have problems with computers is because they don't have to learn to use them. Of course, I am probalby feeding the troll, but I feel it needs to be said: next time a friend/girlfriend/brother/sister/mom/dad/relative
Furthermore, wizards hide many things that are important. Can you imagine a wizard interface to all of the options in sendmail.cf? In this case, it may not be viable. In this case, text files are very useful for configuring.
"Flexibility" is a very generic term. Linux is very useful because of it's flexibility, which should be preserved. Yes, wizards are a part of flexibility, but don't count on me using them. I would launch into a long list of ways the flexibility of Linux is used, but that would make me a Linux bigot/zealot/karma whore. I'm sure that many Fortune 500 companies didn't choose Linux for servers and workstations because of "that thar' wizard thing".
I agree that wizards are good for people that don't know the basics about configuring packages and programs. They are a good way to get people to use software that they might not otherwise may be able to set up properly. However, wizards often suffer from WYSIAYG (What You See Is All You've Got). If a setting that may be important for a small number of users is left out of a wizard, then you hinder their ability to configure. However, general GUI configuration utilities are good too. For example, SWAT is a great example of a GUI configuration utility that is not a wizard.
:-)), people don't have to learn to use their computer.
While graphical is good for beginners and some advanced users, you also should provide flexibility. Configuration files were made to be edited by hand! This is why Linux is so popular, flexibility. By hiding configuration behind a wizard and storing that configuration in a proprietary, non-text format like some large software vender who shall remain nameless, configuration files provide for flexibility. Not to mention that big configuration files (sendmail.cf for example) allow the user to learn from their mistakes, and it is a right of passage to set up one correctly for the first time. It used to be the same for X, but now with all of the wizards (which don't work on all new cards
the batteries run out. "Sorry, can't feel the rumblingness of my joystick my fair lady..."